


four thirty three

by evelyn_hayes



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Under the Red Hood, we need more funky pure boi, why aint there a roy harper fandom
Genre: A little, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Healthy Relationships, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Read the notes please!!, Trust, Vent Writing, cw!!, ish, sorry if its a bit messy, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 09:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelyn_hayes/pseuds/evelyn_hayes
Summary: Roy’s phone buzzes or taps or whatever the taptic engine is supposed to do. It’s a text message from a number that’s not in his contacts. He doesn’t recognize it, so he moves on to the actual content of the text.4:34 // open the door plsRoy blinks, uneasiness creeping up his spine. Putting down his phone on the counter, he grabs the pocketknife in his—surprise—pocket and unsheathes it, slowly heading towards his door. It’s likely that this is probably someone who wants to mess with his head, but there’s a layer of desperation to the simple phrasing of the text that gives Roy pause on his theory. Deciding to play the safe route, he keeps the knife unsheathed and pulls open the door.aka Jason comes to Roy for help after a building falls on him, Roy learns hey, Jason, you're aLIVE?! and venty angst





	four thirty three

**Author's Note:**

> Context: there was a pre-relationship between Roy and Jason shortly before his death. Roy is older than Jason, but not by much! After Jason's death, he comes back to life, does the Red Hood shit, Under the Red Hood the movie plays out, building falls onto Jason, desperate Jason finds Roy and asks him for help. Problem? No one told Roy that Jason was alive and Jason's a little too scared of himself as well as judgement to talk about stuff.
> 
> This is a huge mess and I'm sorry. I just wrote this to write out my spiral lol :) not beta'd because its venty stuff I'm too scared to look back at it lol

His keys clatter against the countertop, presumably leaving behind scratches on the cheaply laminated surface. He pays it no matter—he’s never cared for the marble or stone or plastic-with-painted-embellishments-that-make-it-look-like-marble table. Instead, he turns his attention to his phone, pulling it out of his pocket and checking the lock screen. _4:33 am. Three Snapchat messages. One Instagram notification. No text messages—_

Roy’s phone buzzes or taps or whatever the taptic engine is supposed to do. It’s a text message from a number that’s not in his contacts. He doesn’t recognize it, so he moves on to the actual content of the text.

 

**_4:34 //_ ** _open the door pls_

 

Roy blinks, uneasiness creeping up his spine. Putting down his phone on the counter, he grabs the pocketknife in his—surprise—pocket and unsheathes it, slowly heading towards his door. It’s likely that this is probably someone who wants to mess with his head, but there’s a layer of desperation to the simple phrasing of the text that gives Roy pause on his theory. Deciding to play the safe route, he keeps the knife unsheathed and pulls open the door.

 

Standing in the doorway is a man he barely recognizes as human, so covered in blood and dirt he can’t tell if that’s skin peeking out from underneath the tuft of white hair, grimed by dust, or a patch of paint. He’s wearing a beige leather jacket, definitely well worn and clearly torn. There’s blood soaking almost a third of one sleeve, enough so that it’s making Roy wince. The man’s leaning heavily onto the doorframe, one shoulder propped against the actual frame and the other arm supporting the wound he’s sporting. Roy’s shock dies down as he recognizes him as a human in need of help, clearing his mind enough to raise the simple question: _who the fuck is this guy?_

 

The answer comes in the form of glazed cerulean eyes peeking out from under the curtain of muck and hair. There’s only one other time he’s seen these eyes so fogged up and faded and that is a time Roy wishes he could forget.

 

“Jason?”

 

He chuckles—or tries to, but the noise catches in his throat and it comes out as a cough. “Hey, Harper.”

 

“You’re…” Roy swallows. “You’re alive.”

 

“ _Barely_. As you can see.” He gestures feebly to his wounds. “A building fell on me.”

 

“That building did a lot more than fall on you,” Roy retorts, biting back the bile that comes with the memory. Fire, fire, fire, engulfing the TV screen in which the morning newscast played daily, then cutting to a picture of smiling, oh so happy Jason, smiling up into the camera with a mixture of dangerous delight and childlike wonder that was so uniquely _his_.

 

Jason frowns in confusion, then blinks in recognition. “Oh. That. Yeah. Different building.”

 

 _Jesus._ “Want to come in?” he asks instead, stepping aside from the door.

 

“Hell yeah.”

 

He takes a step forward, only to bite back a pained scream. Roy instinctively reaches out and catches him by his uninjured arm, propping his other hand on Jason’s chest. Slowly, they make their way to Roy’s couch. He tries to let Jason down carefully, but ends up practically rolling him onto the couch. Jason winces enough that Roy knows he’s biting back the pain.

 

“You don’t have to hide it, you know,” Roy comments, heading back towards the door to close it.

 

Jason’s voice is so frayed when he speaks. “Hide what?”

 

Roy opens a cabinet, digging through to find the appropriate first aid kit. “The pain.” _I know how it feels too, Jason. You know this. Trust me._

 

He laughs this time around, the sound a bit clearer. “It’s not for your benefit.”

 

 _There it is._ Grabbing the kit, Roy heads back to the couch. “Then who’s benefit?”

 

Roy makes the mistake of looking Jason in the eye. The obvious pain in them does nothing to dull his heart from slowing down until he can barely feel it thumping. The glistening cerulean orbs meant to hold a soul within them, so hollow and open, crying to hold something again. He feels Jason’s pain so clearly. He feels it too.

 

“Mine,” Jason rasps. He breaks eye contact then. Roy, picking up on his old demeanors, doesn’t question him further.

 

Roy helps him out of his jacket and shirt, keeping an eye on Jason’s face to make sure he isn’t aggravating anything. Jason keeps his eyes shut for most of the ordeal, trying to mask his emotions from Roy. It’s an entirely new side to him Roy’s never encountered, and it scares him.

 

He remembers, all those months ago, the joy they found in each other. How Jason could pull Roy out of a spiraling void with a simple smile and two bowls of instant ramen. How Roy could ground Jason when he saw all the things he could fix in the world and tried to fix all of them at once with a quiet chat underneath the soft moonlight peeking through Roy’s windows back in his Star City dorm. They were so good together, so willing to heal and be healed, so open to the idea of trust in each other and themselves. Jason was sixteen, Roy reaching the end of his seventeenth year; their relationship had barely lasted two months until Jason was ripped from this world by the Joker. Those two months, however, had been everything to Roy—the willingness to slow down, the weight of their relationship, the love he found within himself, all uncovered with Jason. Even then, Roy had recognized that this was no standard teenager’s love tryst. It wasn’t even like most adult marriages.

 

It was something deeper, something warmer, something _better_.

 

And now Jason’s here, covered in grime and blood, masked in lies he can barely keep up, closing his heart from trust. Roy almost feels like crying. It feels like something so special is gone.

 

But Jason is _here_. Roy realizes he is so incredibly _lucky_ to even be holding Jason in his arms. So he makes the best of it.

 

Roy opens up the kit and finds a flask of cheap whiskey. He grabs it and a towel, placing it underneath Jason’s arm while unscrewing the top of the flask. He takes his time, letting Jason prepare himself for the stinging pain to come. Roy takes advantage of that time too, observing the cruel scars etching all across his torso. He can barely imagine how those marks came to last. All he knows is the Joker, and that’s enough for him.

 

Jason’s holding his breath. Roy assumes it’s a bracing method, but it’s too loose to properly brace for the pain. He wonders what’s going on inside Jason’s head, and mourns the fact that Jason won’t trust him with that anymore.

 

“Ready?” Roy asks, holding Jason’s arm down with one of his and holding the flask above the wound with his other. Jason turns his gaze back onto Roy’s. The first hint of change is that the glazed coldness is gone, replaced by something a little more desperate. Jason desperately clutches Roy’s wrist, officially alerting Roy that something was wrong.

 

“Hey, hey,” Roy murmurs, putting down the flask and grasping Jason’s other hand. “What’s wrong?”

 

Jason shakes his head, on the verge of crying. “I can’t tell you.”

 

“Yes, you can, Jason. Please, trust me.” Roy’s pleading at this point, dignity be damned.

 

“No, Roy, you don’t—you don’t understand, please,” Jason cries, “that’s the problem. I can’t tell you. That’s—that’s the problem. I..”

 

Roy feels his heart shatter.

 

He knows, he _knows, he knows_. He knows this golf ball stuck in his throat, he remembers the bile and the swelling pain. He remembers how he desperately wanted to share his pain with someone only to have his body say _fuck no bitch_ and clog up.

 

“Jason.” It’s all he can say.

 

But he can do so much more. That’s what Jason helped him realize, all those years ago.

 

So Roy sweeps him up in a tight hug, holding onto him like a lifeline, like he did years ago. But this time, Roy offers himself up to Jason, gives his love and hope and faith and trust to him, encourages him to lean on Roy, because hey, _I can handle it, Jaybird._ Roy’s eyes close and he lets the tears fall, drip onto the couch—it wasn’t expensive anyways. Jason hugs him right back, sobbing into Roy’s shoulder and clutching onto his shoulder with his good arm, injured arm resting on the couch. They rock together, letting out their sorrows and their anger and their pains and their passions out into each other, quietly but desperately peeking inside the doors to each other’s heart for the response. Roy gives Jason his all, screaming _yes, yes, yes, you’re okay, you’re okay, I’m here with you_ in his head until it becomes a mantra. He knows Jason’s heard it when he buries his head in the crook of Roy’s neck, letting himself relax and breathe out for what seems to be the first time in a while.

 

It’s a while until they get back to the business of cleaning up Jason’s wounds. It’s even longer until Jason asks if Roy wants the whole story, curled up next to him in Roy’s tiny-ass twin bed that’s minimally better than his couch. Roy just strokes his hair and kisses his forehead, thinking up a good, honest response.

 

“I’d love to hear it someday,” Roy rasps out finally. “It doesn’t have to be now, or ever. I promise I won’t pry. I’m sorry I ever did.”

  
Jason shakes his head, smiling softly. “Thank you. And it’s okay—I think I’ll need that push someday.”

 

Roy smiles back. “You sure?”

 

“Yeah,” affirms Jason, and kisses him.

 

At some point they psychically mutually decide to sleep curled on each other. He’s just about to fall asleep when his phone flashes on with an alarm.

 

_7:30 am. Alarm Name: Wake up Harper, You’re Fucking Late For Work._

 

“Fuck work,” he groans, and turns off the alarm. Jason laughs and pulls him in tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> yes good fluff at the end
> 
> for once it's a happy ending lol
> 
>  
> 
> come find me on Tumblr: @thefanfreakwithapencil or my art acc: @sayahra


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